Senator Wong has provided a written answer to Senator Fielding’s three questions. It will be interesting to see what debate ensues. For climate skeptics, it should be a good test of their metal one way or the other.
A rejoinder from the scientists who accompanied Fielding to the recent meeting with Wong can be found here. A somewhat acrimonious exchange can be found at JoNova.
The Australian Climate Science Coalition will no doubt keep us up to date on developments.
Strikes me that the questions were answered more than adequately.
Especially clear is the two graphs at the end (each with two insets) explaining how there can be a decade of cooling from 1998 despite a long term trend towards warming.
That point has been a favorite of David’s.
It really arises from confusing the (dishonest) propaganda of advocacy hacks, who seize on every passing event as “proof” of impending doom, with the actual argument.
This temptation to dishonesty is clear in advocacy on both sides – eg the rejoinder should have simply acknowledged that this point has now been clarified for them (as should Dave), but instead they just waffled.
Also if they do have anything better than a back of an envelope calculation on sea temperatures they are certainly obliged to write a paper as challenged rather than pretending in email correspondence that the challenge to do so is just a ploy.
The real debate should be about the alarmism (including bullying and religious dogmatism) and the economic nonsense. This other stuff is not helpful.
Arthur, you should have been working for the Tobacco companies about 20 years ago. Your arguments against the GW hypothesis are precisely those that they used to refute the link between smoking and health.
Seize upon minor empirical errors and accuse the proponents of “alarmism”. I have news for you, just about every set of scientific observations will contain errors. You need to look to the underlying physics and attack these. Good luck.
Dalec
My Dear Dalek,
Oh my dear, dear Dalek,
Arthur
Arthur,
When you guys at Strange Times finally admit that there is a Global Warming phenomenon I will salute you.
Since I detect a certain wavering your previously totally dogmatic position I may not have to wait too long – say until the Greenland Ice cap melts perhaps?
Dalec
Arthur
I’ve always agreed that the present temperature plateau doesn’t rule out a longer term upward trend. Although, I’ve also been rather tempted to think that it does not augur well for the more dramatic scenarios and that it is more in keeping with a linear increase.
dalec says he’ll offer a salute when ‘you guys at Strange Times admit there is a Global Warming phenomenon’. I have responded to this previously, over the years, but dalec just keeps hearing those voices in his head. As I have said on at least three other occasions, the IPCC data shows a warming over the past 150 years and I can only take that as accurate and cannot see how governments that send their representatives to the IPCC can do otherwise than to accept the reality of that warming.
As dalec would know, the warming is less than a degree over that period. He would also know that there is continuing debate among scientists in relevant fields as to whether CO2 is the principal driver of this warming and as to whether it is potentially catastrophic.
This latter point is the key one, really, as an ethos of alarmism now seems to permeate political decision-making and the public at large. Indeed it’s difficult not to turn on MTV, SBS or CNN without some bombardment of the alarmist message as though there is no on-going scientific debate. I know from personal experience that this happens in our shcools too.
There are only so many times I can be expected to point out dalec’s misrepresentations – he repeats them all the time so I figure he is being mischievous. And, of cours,e it also shows that he is incapable of proper debate.
JoNova has some more documents on the Wong Fielding Meeting.
I wrote up some brief comments on my blog (Labour: no guts no glory) about last night’s Q&A which featured diverse discussion of Gillard’s new climate “fix”, on this issue Penny Wong was very much on the defensive. On the other hand she won support for her gutsy stand on the gay and asian issue. This had much more of a flavour of a real debate than the official leader’s debate.